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Foreign Religious Series 



Edited by 
R. J. COOKE, D. D. 



First Series. i6mo, cloth. Each 40 cents, net. 



THE VIRGIN BIRTH 

By Professor Richard H. Griitzmacher, of the 

University of Rostock 



THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 

By Professor Eduard Riggenbach, of the University 
of Basle 



THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS 

By Professor Max Meyer, Lie. Theol., Gottberg, 

Germany 



THE MIRACLES OF JESUS 

By Professor Karl Beth, of the University 
of Berlin 



THE GOSPEL OF JOHN AND THE 
SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 

By Professor Fritz Barth, of the University 
of Bern 



NEW TESTAMENT PARALLELS IN 
BUDDHISTIC LITERATURE 

By Professor Karl Von Hase, of the University 
of Breslau 



New Testament 

Parallels in Buddhistic 

Literature 



By 
KARL VON HASE 

(Professor in the University of Breslau, Germany) 




NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 
CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & GRAHAM 



£?i*J: 



.C* 



H s 



[LIBRARY of CGN#JESS{ 
Two Copies R»c«iveC 

DEC 24 190? 

LASS* XXC.NO. J 



Copyright, 1907, by 
EATON & MAINS. 



NEW TESTAMENT PARALLELS IN 
BUDDHISTIC LITERATURE 

I 

For the intellectual life of our times Bud- 
dhism has become an important factor. 
Since the year 1891 three international so- 
cieties for the propagation of Buddhism in 
India and the West have been formed in 
Calcutta, Rangoon, and Tokyo; also, pro- 
vincial societies in Colombo, Burma, and 
San Francisco. 

A Buddhist catechism in the English lan- 
guage, by Henry E. Olcott, has been pub- 
lished in its thirty-fifth edition, and trans- 
lated into more than twenty languages. Not 
only in England, whose interest in Bud- 
dhism can readily be understood, but even 
in Germany enthusiastic advocates of this 
religion, which they call "The Religion of 
the Future/' are on the increase. In Der 
Buddhist, a monthly magazine on Bud- 
dhism, published since April, 1905, by the 
Buddhist publishing firm at Leipsic and 
edited by Karl R. Seidenstucker with the 
assistance of Buddhist monks, priests, and 
3 



4 New Testament Parallels 

laymen, we read in the preface: "The ap- 
pearance of a Buddhist magazine in Europe, 
especially in Germany, is made desirable by 
the continual increase of those who, directly 
or indirectly, must be designated as adher- 
ents of Buddhism. More than this, the pro- 
duction of a central organ for these cir- 
cles has become an urgent necessity." 

Under the auspices of the "Buddhist Mis- 
sionary Society in Germany,'' with its head- 
quarters at Leipsic, founded August 15, 

1903, twenty-two public lectures were de- 
livered at Leipsic during the winter of 1903- 

1904, in the interest of Buddhism, besides 
the publication of small Buddhist writings. 

In the first number of The Buddhist we 
read: "We stand at the beginning of a 
powerful religious movement, and the next 
decades have unexpected surprises in store 
for the West in that direction." The offi- 
cial numbers also of the so-called Vedanta 
Philosophe, edited by E. A. Kernwart, en- 
deavor to make propaganda for this con- 
ception of the world and life. The novel In 
the Shadow of Death obtained the prize for 
its description of the belief in regeneration 
in a Buddhist sense. 



In Buddhistic Literature 5 

How is this fancy for Buddhism in out 
day to be explained? It is not merely a 
whim of certain circles, a spiritual sport, a 
mere accident. On the one hand, Buddhism 
is met by a pessimistic conception of life, 
which finds in it a confirmation and often 
a thrilling expression for its disposition and 
conception of the world. On the other hand, 
an opposition to an incoherent, a materialis- 
tic, worldly view which does not satisfy 
the internal life and a deeper want which 
does not find in Christianity the solution 
of the world riddles of life, but has a theo- 
sophico-world bent, leads directly toward 
Buddhism. 

One may show how the movement or- 
iginated in Germany, and how it was ad- 
vanced by the aid of literature. First of all 
by Schopenhauer, who, while a young man 
at Weimar, was led by the so-called "Kunst- 
Meyer" to the study of Hindu literature, and 
from it obtained that pessimism which char- 
acterizes his philosophy of the The World as 
Will and Idea. Then by Edward von Hart- 
mann, who, in his Philosophy of the Uncon- 
scious, considered the cessation of conscious- 
ness and destruction of the human race as 



6 New Testament Parallels 

most desirable. Also, by Frederick Niet- 
zsche, who knows no guilt, but only folly. 
To these may be added the newest so-called 
Seekers of God and All-seers in Friedrich- 
shagen, on the Mueggel-lake, near Berlin 
— the brothers Hart, Wilhelm Boschle and 
Brune Wille, who, secluded from the world, 
and yet not too far from the imperial city, 
seek to lose themselves by a mystic absorp- 
tion into the universe. All these, as has 
justly been said, have tasted more or less 
of the sweet poison, and like any Asiatic 
have eagerly grasped at the Buddhist opium 
pipe. 

When one considers that Schopenhauer 
is read especially by the academically edu- 
cated young people, not in his large philo- 
sophical works but in the minor, easy, witty 
Parerga und Paralipomena ; that Edward 
von Hartmann's Philosophy of the Uncon- 
scious is published in stereotyped editions; 
that the Friedrichshagen colony works 
through novels and poems, one can easily 
see that the spread of Buddhist teachings 
among many finds a well-prepared soil. 

True, these currents move within certain 
circles, one might almost say within certain 



In Buddhistic Literature 7 

conditions and periods of life, which fact 
makes them interesting and fashionable for 
many. But, with the journalism of our day 
it cannot be otherwise than similar to the 
case created by the lectures on "Babel and 
Bible" by Delitzsch. The movement will in- 
fluence large circles. On the other hand, 
many who praise Buddhism have no clear 
perception of it. They are enthusiastic 
about ancient Hindu philosophy and poetry, 
with its wistful speculations and dreaming 
monotony, and call this Buddhism without 
knowing its origin, and without distinguish- 
ing it from present-day Buddhism. They 
find surprising similarities between Bud- 
dhism and Christianity, and do not perceive 
that these similarities are only apparent and 
fallacious. They praise the noble morality 
of Buddhism and do not consider the effects 
which these ethical views would have upon 
our national life should they obtain author- 
ity. 

But serious science has also become inter- 
ested in Buddhism. Since Sanscrit scholars 
more than a century ago opened the treas- 
ures of ancient Indian poetry and wisdom, 
the sacred writings of the Buddhists have 



8 New Testament Parallels 

been translated more and more into the lan- 
guages of Europe. The life of Buddha, his 
teaching, and the history of Buddhism have 
been scientifically investigated. Although 
the time of composition of many Buddhist 
writings is still uncertain, their totality, 
concerning which there is always something 
new, forms a part of the literature of India. 

The recently opened sources have aided 
much in the study of the science of compara- 
tive religions, which is so eagerly cultivated 
in our day. The great law of evolution in 
natural science is applied to the religious 
events of the world's history. According 
to this law, even in history nothing appears 
without mediation. Science, by eliminating, 
from this standpoint, every immediate in- 
terference of God and every revelation, can 
conceive and represent historically only that 
which happened. The origin of Christianity 
is explained from the cooperation of Greek, 
Jewish, and Oriental intellectual forces and 
conditions. With great learning relations 
and influences are everywhere demonstrated. 

The influence of Babylonian culture upon 
the ideas of Israel, and thus upon the sacred 
writings of the Old Testament, was acknowl- 



In Buddhistic Literature 9 

eaged in scientific circles long before the 
"Babel and Bible" controversy. But it was 
the exaggeration, the form of its assertion, 
and the erroneous consequences inferred 
therefrom which excited the mind. Through 
a quiet scientific discussion the facts are be- 
ing elucidated, though at some points there 
is still a difference of opinion which may last 
for a long time. More important, however, 
is the question concerning the relation of 
Christianity to Buddhism; especially of the 
possible dependence of the Gospels upon 
Buddhist sources. It is true that the asser- 
tion of Buddhist influences upon Christian- 
ity is by no means new. Rationalism had 
already made the suggestion that Jesus ac- 
quired his wisdom and knowledge during a 
lengthy abode in Egypt and India ; a sugges- 
tion which quite recently supplied the ma- 
terial for a French hagiologist to compose, 
under the name of Pierre Leroux, a novel 
which he entitled Jesus, in which a Bud- 
dhist, a venerable man who had come to 
Nazareth for the study of religions, having 
perceived the magnetic power of the boy 
Jesus, which he displayed in an accidental 
helping, took him to Egypt and made 



io New Testament Parallels 

him acquainted with the mysteries of Bud- 
dhism. 

In a scientific manner Rudolf Seydel, pro- 
fessor of philosophy at Leipsic, was the first 
who endeavored to prove Buddhist influ- 
ences, though not upon Christ, yet upon the 
origin of the New Testament Gospels and 
the Revelation of John, in his work Das 
Evangelium Jesu in Seinem Verhaltniss zur 
Buddha sage, etc., Leipsic, 1882, which was 
followed by a lecture on "Buddha and 
Christ," 1883, and in 1884 by Die Buddhale- 
gende und das Leben Jesu nach den Evan- 
gelien (second edition published by the son 
in 1897). He imagined himself to have 
found in Buddhist writings a great many 
narratives which served as models for the 
evangelistic accounts of the life of Jesus. To 
make this fancy acceptable, he advanced 
the hypothesis that the evangelists, espe- 
cially Saint Luke, perused for the Infancy 
story a poetic apocalyptic gospel, now lost, 
for which a biography of Buddha was used 
as a pattern. This Buddhizing Christian gos- 
pel followed the Buddha legend closely, 
except that it passed over everything specific- 
ally Indian, everything which was too sen- 



In Buddhistic Literature ii 

sttal and colored, sexual, corrupting, and 
supplying as far as possible Old Testament 
reminiscences in the proper places. In a 
Christian sense it consecrated, deepened, and 
spiritualized the Buddhist borrowings. Be- 
sides the collection of sayings of proto- 
Matthew and the stories of proto-Mark, 
Seydel imagines that the three synoptists 
had before them this Buddhistically colored, 
poetic-apocalyptic type of Jesus. He as- 
sumes that it was one of the "many" sources 
which Luke I. I mentions. Seydel tried 
to prove this by referring to no less than 
fifty-one pieces, taken from the evangelistic 
history as well as from the teachings of 
Jesus, in which he thought to show analo- 
gies and borrowings. 

The possibility that, inversely, the Chris- 
tian Gospels could have influenced the Bud- 
dhist legend Seydel rejected, asserting 
the earlier origin of the Buddhist original 
writings in question, especially of Lalita- 
Vistara, the main source of the legendary 
biography of Buddha. He pointed to the fact 
that the original text, now lost, was trans- 
lated into Chinese in A. D. 67, and is now 
extant in an enlarged form, which enlarge- 



12 New Testament Parallels 

ment probably originated in the first Chris- 
tian century; and he emphasized the early 
pre-Christian formation of an idolatrously 
worshiped Buddhist canon, which precludes 
a Christian influence. Though the time of 
composition of the Buddhist writings in 
question has not yet been fixed with certain- 
ty, so that the chronological table added to 
the second edition of The Buddha Legend 
and the Life of Jesus by M. Seydel is only 
to serve as a help to the reader and not as a 
record of certain events, it is admitted as 
very probable that the respective Buddhist 
writings were composed before the Gospels. 
There is no doubt that since the campaign 
of Xerxes and Alexander the Great an inter- 
course existed between the Far East and 
Asia Minor. 1 But this influence must not 
be overrated. Such a prominent scholar as 
Max Miiller writes in 1883, with reference 
to the present question: "That surprising 
agreements are extant between Buddhism 
and Christianity cannot be denied. It must 
also be admitted that Buddhism existed at 
least four hundred years before Christian- 



1 See the opinion of Professor Rhys Davids on this entire sub- 
ject in Incarnation and Recent Criticism, p. 97. Eaton & Mains. 



In Buddhistic Literature 13 

ity ; I even go further, and should be thank- 
ful in the highest degree if someone could 
show me the historical channels through 
which Buddhism had influenced ancient 
Christianity. All my life I have sought for 
these channels, but thus far I have found 
none." Later (1896), the same scholar has, 
indeed, mentioned not only a number of 
analogies between these religions, like con- 
fession, fasting, celibacy of the priests, 
rosary, which, however, belong not to bib- 
lical Christianity but to a later development. 
He also referred to Old and New Testament 
stories which can be traced back to Buddhist 
sources, but the proof of this he does not 
give. His reference to the Buddhist mis- 
sionaries who went out into the world in the 
third century before Christ is met by the 
fact that, in spite of its missionaries, Bud- 
dhism was very little known in the Christian 
circles of Asia Minor, Egypt, or even of the 
West during the first two Christian cen- 
turies. Clement of Alexandria, who died 
about A. D. 211, is the first to mention 
Buddha by name, and he speaks of his com- 
mandments, his deification, and the worship 
of his bones. 



14 New Testament Parallels 

Seydel's statements caused much com- 
ment, while some took exception to some 
points and objected to his hypothesis; but, 
on the whole, they acknowledged at least 
the possibility of Buddhistic influence upon 
Christianity and the composition of the Gos- 
pels, yea, some partly went beyond Seydel's 
moderate assertions. 

That which science acknowledged as pos- 
sible was taken for granted by others and 
made the most of in a literary way. Six 
years after the appearance of Seydel's first 
work Friedrich Zimmermann, under the fic- 
titious name of a Bhikchu monk, Subhadra, 
wrote in his Buddhist catechism : "It is very 
probable that Jesus of Nazareth, whose 
teachings agree so much with those of Bud- 
dhism, from his twelfth to his thirtieth year, 
during which time the Gospels know nothing 
of him, was a disciple of Buddhist monks, 
and under their guidance obtained perfec- 
tion. He then returned to his native coun- 
try to proclaim to his people the redeeming 
doctrine. This teaching of Jesus was after- 
ward mutilated and mixed with errors from 
the law book of the Jews. The principal 
teachings of Christianity, however, as well 



In Buddhistic Literature 15 

as the whole work of the founder, are cer- 
tainly of Buddhist origin ; and the kind Naz- 
arene, whom every Buddhist will also rev- 
erence, was an Araha, who had obtained the 
Nirvana. Now the time is again ripe in 
Europe, w T hen the Western descendants of 
the Aryans can hear and know the pure, un- 
adulterated teaching of Buddha. This will 
be the Religion of the Future in Europe." 

What Subhadra considered as probable, 
Nicolas Notovitsch meant to prove histor- 
ically. In Thibet, the country of Lamaism, 
he claimed to have found an ancient docu- 
ment in a Buddhist monastery, whose con- 
tents he published in his La Vie inconnue de 
Jesus Christ (A Gap in the Life of Jesus), 
Paris, 1894. In this document we are told 
that Jesus when fourteen years of age had 
fled to India, where the Brahmans taught 
him to read the Vedas, to cure by means of 
prayer, and to drive out evil spirits. After 
six years he was obliged to leave that terri- 
tory because he had taken care of slaves. 
He then came into the territory of Buddha, 
studied his teachings and preached what he 
considered the highest perfection. From 
India he went to Persia, and when twenty- 



1 6 New Testament Parallels 

nine years old he returned again to Pales- 
tine. He went about as a preacher, was ac- 
cused before Pilate as dangerous, but though 
protected by the Pharisees, his friends, he 
was, nevertheless, tortured and executed. 
On the third day his grave was found empty, 
and the rumor had spread that the great 
Judge had sent his angel to remove to the 
heights the mortal frame of the Holy, in 
whom a part of the Divine Spirit dwelt on 
earth. The book was proved to be a fraud. 
Such literary misuse has not deterred 
science from reexamining the supposed 
parallels between the Gospels and the Bud- 
dhist traditions. English, French, German, 
and Dutch scholars took up the work. This 
was especially done by H. S. Stix, in Christ 
or Buddha? Leipsic, 1900; also, by Otto 
Pfleiderer in a lecture delivered before the 
International Congress of Religions at 
Amsterdam, September, 1903; and by D. G. 
A. Van den Bergh, of Eysinga, in his In- 
dische Enfliisse auf evangelische Erzuhlun- 
gen (in the Forschungen, edited by Bous- 
set and Gunkel, fourth part). Both Pfleid- 
erer and Van den Bergh admit Buddhist in- 
fluences upon the evangelic narratives, the 



In Buddhistic Literature 17 

former to a larger, the latter to a lesser, ex- 
tent. Though the measure of influences is, 
according to both, less than has formerly 
been asserted, for example, by Seydel, this 
small influence becomes still less from the 
fact that the one considers as doubtful what 
the other accepts as probable; and such an 
expert in this field as Hermann Oldenberg, 
in a review of Van den Bergh's book (Theol. 
Literaturzeitung, 1905, No. 3), expressed 
some further doubts even on those points 
on which both are agreed. At any rate, the 
question has been treated in these two new- 
est writings with such learning and impar- 
tiality that their results form a safe basis for 
further inquiry. 

In examining the question there is one dif- 
ficulty, namely, that there is scarcely a 
scholar who is at home alike in both depart- 
ments, the Buddhist literature and New 
Testament theology. But Seydel (1882, p. 
5) has rightly pointed out the danger that, in 
the present specialization of sciences, compre- 
hensive and comparative works are in dan- 
ger of being entirely left undone, unless 
those undertake them who are not special- 
ists; and Oldenberg (Theol. Literaturzeit- 



18 New Testament Parallels 

ung, 1905, No. 3), in the case of the bor- 
rowing problems, wishes to leave the de- 
cision to the specialists in religion, as to 
which religion would be the borrowing one, 
since it must be determined whether the 
questionable phenomenon can be sufficiently 
explained without borrowing, or whether the 
thought and form of these phenomena give 
weight to the opinion that foreign elements 
were admixed. 

When Seydel laid it down as a critical 
axiom, "Agreement awakens the thought of 
borrowing when the common trail seems in- 
explicable on one of two sides, while it seems 
entirely proper on the other," and, "Seem- 
ingly accidental agreement of unimportant 
events and its frequent occurrence have great 
importance for the question of borrowing," 
Van den Bergh, while acknowledging these 
principles, nevertheless, points out that 
many of the formerly alleged parallels fail 
as arguments, because they can be explained 
either from the identity of circumstances un- 
der which they mutually originated, or from 
the same phase of religious development of 
Christianity and Buddhism ; yea, sometimes 
even from ordinary human reasons, so that 



In Buddhistic Literature 19 

without doubt many agreements in the life 
of Jesus and Buddha can be ascribed to the 
like spiritual sphere in which both appeared. 

Van den Bergh is surprised at the agree- 
ment of the following New Testament nar- 
ratives with Indian legends: Simeon in the 
temple, the boy Jesus at the age of twelve, 
the baptism of Jesus, the temptation, the 
beatitude of the mother of Jesus, the widow's 
mite, the walking on the sea, the Samaritan 
woman at the well, and the universal confla- 
gration. Doubtful, however, seems to him 
the agreement or similarity in these narra- 
tives : the annunciation, the choice of the dis- 
ciples, Nathanael, the prodigal son, the man 
born blind, and the transfiguration. 

Pfleiderer arranges differently by putting 
the Christ-picture of the primitive faith in 
religio-historical illustration, as his plan re- 
quires, and, accordingly, considers Christ as 
the Son of God, as Conqueror of Satan, as 
Miracle-Saviour, as Conqueror over Death, 
and Life Mediator, and as King of Kings. 
Besides other like heathenish notions, he 
quotes the Buddhist parallels, and shows 
how much they have influenced the forma- 
tion of the Christ-picture. 



20 New Testament Parallels 

II 

While Buddhist influence upon the forma- 
tion of the history of the infancy of Jesus 
might seem more credible, his later life, down 
to his suffering and death on the cross, of- 
fers fewer parallels to the life of Buddha. 
The history of the infancy, as the Gospel of 
Mark shows, belonged not to the original 
evangelical preaching. Saint John's Gospel 
also does not mention it. In the apostolic 
epistles it entirely recedes. Thus the tradi- 
tion for this part of the life of Jesus seems 
to have been exposed in a larger degree to 
foreign influences than the time of his pub- 
lic ministry and suffering of which his disci- 
ples were witnesses. 

The main source for the history of the 
birth and infancy of Buddha to his first 
preaching in Benares is the Lalita-Vistara. 
Foucaux, who, in the Annales du Musee 
Guimet, tome vi, Paris, 1834, gave a French 
translation of the Lalita-Vistara, translates 
the words by "developpement des jeux," 
more accurately "completely described ac- 
tion," "the book of changes/' In a Chinese 
translation it is called "The holy book of the 



In Buddhistic Literature 21 

acts of Buddha/' Seydel puts its origin 
between A. D. 10 and 45. The Chinese 
translation (A. D. 67) is based upon an 
"enlarged" form of the book. Whereas the 
original form closes with the first sermon of 
Buddha in Benares, the latter adds a few 
chapters on the end of his life. 

In a detailed manner Lalita-Vistara 
speaks of the preparation in heaven for the 
birth of Buddha (Foucaux, p. 74 sqq). 
The family which is to be found worthy that 
Bodhisattva, the future Buddha, should be- 
long to, must have sixty-four distinguishing 
features, and the woman who is to bear him 
must have thirty-two more in addition, all 
of which are mentioned. Before Bodhisattva 
leaves heaven, he assembles the hundred 
thousand gods and sons of gods who bow 
before him in adoration, and whom he in- 
structs concerning the one hundred and 
eight shining gates of the law. The sons of 
the gods ask him not to leave heaven, which 
would lose its splendor after his departure; 
but he takes the tiara from his head and puts 
it on Maitreya, his successor, who after him 
is to be Buddha. In the meantime Queen 
Maya, surrounded by all splendor and 



22 New Testament Parallels 

riches, flowers and birds, adorned with the 
most beautiful festive dresses and jewels, 
prepared herself by fasting to give birth to 
Buddha. According to one tradition, a ray 
of light entered into the body of Maya ; ac- 
cording to another, a small white elephant. 
To her husband, King Suddhodana, the 
event is announced by spirits flying in the 
air saying : "Girded with righteousness and 
tender mercy, adored on earth and in the 
splendid heaven, the coming Buddha leaves 
the glorious spheres and comes down to earth 
to be born of sweet Maya." When, after ten 
months, the hour comes for Maya she asks 
the king for permission to go to the pleasure 
garden Loumbini in Kapilavastu. The king 
orders twenty thousand elephants adorned 
with gold and pearls, twenty thousand 
horses, white as snow and silver, and 
twenty thousand warriors to accompany her. 
One hundred thousand bells ring when she 
alone ascends the most beautiful traveling 
carriage. Sixty thousand women, protected 
by forty thousand men of their tribe, go be- 
fore her. Arrived at the garden Loumbini, 
she seats herself under the most beautiful of 
all trees, whose branches bow in salutation. 



In Buddhistic Literature 23 

In that moment Buddha leaves her bosom by 
the right side. The deities of the four regions 
of the heavens receive him ; several hundred 
thousand deities bathe him; he, however, 
sitting on a big lotus, looks around toward 
the ten points of the universe with the look 
of a lion, with the look of a big man, and 
with a loud voice proclaims his preeminence 
over all gods, and the coming redemption. 
Five days after the birth the Brahmans of 
the city meet and, in accordance with a su- 
pernatural command, the boy is called "Sid- 
dharta," that is, "He who is successful in all 
things." On the seventh day after his birth 
his mother dies, and her sister, a concubine 
of the king, acts as his mother. 

The discrepancy between the history of 
the birth of Buddha and Jesus is great. Stix, 
indeed, calls attention to the fact, that here 
as well as there, the birth of a child con- 
ceived by a holy spirit is announced by an- 
gels, and that Jesus, like Buddha, belongs to 
a royal house ; but Seydel begins his chapter 
"Bethlehem" with the sentence, "We must 
not only point out parallels, but also con- 
trasts," yet he remarks that the birthplace of 
Buddha, Kapilavastu, at the council held in 



24 New Testament Parallels 

the Tushita-heaven concerning the place of 
the birth, was praised because built, in re- 
membrance of the penitent Kapila, as "the 
great city of the beings which planted the 
roots of salvation/' Van den Bergh will 
not explain on the ground of borrowing the 
similarity of an announcement of the birth 
of Jesus to Mary (Luke I. 29-33) an d ^e 
interpretation of a dream of the mother of 
Buddha as referring to the birth of a won- 
derful child; but he quotes, though only as 
a single, concrete expression, which might 
excite the thought of a borrowing, that in 
the Thibetan redaction of Lalita-Vistara, 
the remark of the Brahmans, "Here is no 
misfortune for the family/' answers to the 
biblical words of the angel to Mary, "Fear 
not, Mary," yet he would not ascribe any 
importance to such a coincidence. 

But special importance is attached to the 
agreement of the history of Simeon in the 
temple with the visit of Asita in the royal 
palace (Lalita-Vistara, by Foucaux, pp. 91- 
101). Asita, an ascetic, who had obtained 
the eight magic qualifications which enabled 
him to visit the heavens, learns there that in 
the world a mighty Buddha has been born. 



In Buddhistic Literature 25 

Surveying the world with his divine eye, he 
fixes his gaze upon the kingdom of India, 
and, in the great city of Kapilavastu, he be- 
holds, in the palace of King Suddhodana, the 
child in the light of the bright splendor of 
pure deeds, and worshiped by all the world, 
while a host of heavenly spirits sings the 
praise of Buddha. By means of his power 
he comes down to Kapilavastu. Having ar- 
rived in the royal palace, he says : "Rajah, 
a son is born unto thee. I wish to see him." 
The prince, richly dressed, was brought by 
the order of the king to do honor- to the 
Brahman ; he, however, rose from the throne 
on which he sat and with hands folded over 
his head he bowed before the chosen Buddha. 
The king likewise bowed before his son. 
Asita quotes thirty-two bodily signs and 
eighty-four signs of a secondary kind, 
which characterize the boy as the future 
great man. Suddenly the ascetic began to 
cry. The king's people ask, surprised: 
"Does some misfortune hang over the child 
of our ruler?" He answered: "Over him 
hangs no misfortune; he is destined to be- 
come the Buddha." "But why dost thou 
weep?" "Because I am old and frail, and 



26 New Testament Parallels 

shall not live to see the glory of his Bud- 
dhastys; therefore, I weep." Stix says: 
"The similarity of the narratives is simply 
bewildering." But the diversity consists 
not only in the local coloring of India and 
Israel, but also in the modes of thought of 
Asita, who weeps because he shall not live 
to see the reign of Buddha, and of Simeon, 
w T ho thanks God that his eyes have seen the 
Saviour. What is more natural than that 
the old time and the new meet in an old man, 
and be represented in the newly born child ? 
What more human than that the old man 
should take the child in his arms ? Of Van 
den Bergh's distrust of the biblical narra- 
tive, which without positive Old Testament 
command has the child Jesus brought to the 
temple in order to thus bring about the meet- 
ing with Simeon, O. Wenberg says (Theol. 
Literaturzeitung, 1905, No. 3) that he makes 
the poetry of the old narrative subordinate 
to the prose of little faith. 

Stix quotes a parallel to the infanticide at 
Bethlehem, but only according to the late 
Abhinishkramana-Sutra, which Beal trans- 
lated from a Chinese version of the sixth 
century after Christ, under the title of The 



In Buddhistic Literature 2,7 

Romantic Legend of Sakya Buddha. King 
Bimbisara is informed of the birth of a boy 
of whom the Brahmans predicted that he 
would either be a mighty ruler or a Buddha. 
Being advised to send an army to destroy 
the child, Bimbisara rejoins : "Do not speak 
thus ; if the child shall be a Chakravati Raja 
[mighty ruler], he will wield a righteous 
scepter and we must obey him ; but, in case 
he becomes the powerful Buddha, whose love 
and mercy may redeem all men, we must be- 
come his disciples." Herod and Bimbisara 
bear little likeness to one another. Seydel 
also says (p. 143) : "Real parallels to the 
infanticide at Bethlehem we do not find in 
Buddhism/' 

As the history of the infancy of Jesus also 
includes the account of Jesus when twelve 
years old among the scribes in the temple, 
it is also reported of Buddha that he was 
more learned than his teacher. Lalita-Vis- 
tara narrates (Foucaux, pp. 106-109) : Sixty 
thousand young girls, born in the same night 
with Buddha, were given him for company 
and service. The elders of the Sakya family 
declared that it was necessary that the young 
prince be brought to the temple of the gods. 



28 New Testament Parallels 

The king desired that all streets of the city- 
through which the chariot was to pass should 
be decorated. All that were getting ill-luck 
— the lame, hunchback, deaf, blind, dumb, 
deformed — were removed. The Brahmans 
were to pray; all bells were to toll. When 
the young prince was dressed he asked his 
foster mother, Maha Pradjapati Gautamis- 
ma, without quivering his eyelids, in the 
kindest manner : "Mother, whither are they 
going to take me ?" She replied : "To the 
temple of god, my son." The young prince 
smiled and said: "When I was born the 
three thousand worlds were shaken, and the 
high gods bowed their heads to my feet. 
Which other god is greater than I, that thou 
bringest me to him? I am god over all 
gods; no god is like unto me; how shall 
there be one over me ? But to accommodate 
myself to the custom of the work, I will go, 
O mother. When they shall see my super- 
natural change, the transported multitude 
will surround me with honors; gods and 
men will unite and say, 'He is god through 
himself/ " Bodhisattva had hardly entered 
the temple when the images of the gods Civa, 
Skanda, Brahma, and the other gods, rose 



In Buddhistic Literature 29 

from their places and fell down at his feet, 
and gods and people to the number of 
one hundred thousand, filled the city with 
the cry of admiration and joy. Flowers 
rained from heaven, one hundred thousand 
musical instruments were heard without 
being troubled, and all gods praised 
Buddha. 

Lalita-Vistara also speaks of the wisdom 
of the child (pp. 11 3-1 17). Surrounded by 
ten thousand infants, accompanied by ten 
thousand carts filled with victuals, gold, and 
silver, at the sound of eight hundred thou- 
sand musical instruments, under a shower 
of flowers, in company of eight thousand 
daughters of the gods as lookers-on, Bod- 
hisattva enters the writing hall. The 
teacher cannot bear the splendor and the 
majesty and falls down before him. Bodhi- 
sattva asks the teacher which of the twenty- 
four alphabets, which he mentions by name, 
he is to teach him. When the many thou- 
sand children who had come with him were 
to learn the letters, they are perfectly able to 
do so by means of the blessing of the pres- 
ence of Buddha, who had only gone to the 
school for that purpose, and used the oppor- 



30 New Testament Parallels 

tunity to propound at each letter one of the 
holy teachings of his law. 

Once also Bodhisattva was missed. Ac- 
cording to the introduction to the Ishatak- 
kasi, which comprise the tales of his forms 
of existence before his earthly birth, his dis- 
appearance happened on a festival, at the 
annual plowing of the king with a golden 
plow. Lalita-Vistara narrates (pp. 118- 
123) : One day the young prince went with 
sons of the counselors of his father to visit 
a farmers' village. Having seen the work, 
he sat alone with crossed legs under a tree. 
The king missed him, sought him, and found 
him absorbed in thought in the shadow of 
the tree, surrounded by five saints, shining 
from the light of his majesty like the moon 
in the midst of the stars. And he said to 
his father: "Let alone the plowing, my 
father, and seek higher things. If you need 
money, I will let it rain down; clothes, I 
give them to thee; and whatever else you 
need I will let it rain down." He then re- 
turns, but in his mind he planned to leave 
the paternal home. 

It is obvious that there are analogies be- 
tween the history of the birth and infancy of 



In Buddhistic Literature 31 

Buddha and Jesus, but they have their origin 
not in borrowing, which has thus far not 
been proven in literature from any of the 
biblical histories adduced above, but in the 
agreement of Buddhist and Christian belief 
in the supernatural birth of a Holy Child. 
Faith could not imagine this to have oc- 
curred otherwise than by being surrounded 
by extraordinary events and heavenly phe- 
nomena, and hence they are found here as 
well as there, partly agreeing, partly differ- 
ing, conditioned by the similarity in the 
world of conception and by the diversity in 
popular manner of representation. Pfleid- 
erer, therefore, rightly discards entirely the 
small similarities in the narratives, over 
against which stand a much larger number 
of dissimilarities, which are not mentioned, 
and only emphasizes the great common 
thought of both religions: the belief in the 
supernatural birth of both founders and be- 
lief in the incarnation of Divinity. The no- 
tion of sons of gods is certainly largely dif- 
fused in heathenism; we also find striking 
parallels in heathenish legends to the virgin 
birth; but by that the generally human be- 
lief in the revelation of God in the human 



32 New Testament Parallels 

world is only attested. The assumption that 
the belief in the virgin birth of Jesus was 
taken from heathenish ideas at a time when 
the Gospels of Matthew and Luke originated 
is opposed, as Harnack also admits, by the 
entire and oldest tradition of Christendom. 
Pfleiderer, however, finds also an agreement 
in this: that, according to the Buddha 
legend, the standing designation for the 
heavenly essence of Buddha, presupposed 
for the separate incarnations, is "man, noble 
man, great man, victorious lord," just as, 
according to the Jewish apocalyptic notion, 
the preexistent Messiah is called "Son of 
man," or "man," "second man from heaven" 
by Paul ; "Son of man" in the Gospels. The 
Gnostic doctrine of the different incarna- 
tions of the heavenly spirits in Adam, the 
patriarchs and Jesus has also such a striking 
relationship with the Indian doctrine that a 
direct connection can hardly be doubted. 
But just here the Buddhist and Christian 
ideas separate. According to the latter 
God becomes man in Christ; according to 
the former Buddha is from his very birth a 
man — though a perfect one — but no divine 
being; at any rate, not God in the highest 



In Buddhistic Literature 33 

sense of the word, for which Buddhism in 
general has no room. Thus, instead of a 
similarity we get an essential diversity, 
which is covered only by small, seeming, ex- 
ternal similarities. 

A second group of parallels Pfleiderer 
comprises under the head of "Christ as Con- 
queror of Satan." The baptism of Jesus as 
the consecration for his prophetical office 
and struggle could here also find a place ac- 
cording to Van den Bergh, who sees in it 
some reminiscence of Buddhist tradition, 
not, indeed, according to the biblical descrip- 
tion, but according to that of the apocryphal 
Gospel of the Hebrews. According to this 
the members of the family of Jesus advise 
him to be baptized, whereas he considers 
this as unnecessary. This trait in the Gos- 
pel of the Hebrews Van den Bergh con- 
siders as older, more authentic than the bib- 
lical statement, because it makes for a more 
natural canception of the person of Jesus, a 
more naive form of the gospel statement and 
the behavior of his relatives. It also an- 
swers to the visit of Bodhisattva to the tem- 
ple, mentioned above, in conforming to the 
usage of the world. As he considered the 



34 New Testament Parallels 

walk to the temple unnecessary, so Jesus 
the walk to the Jordan, and both comply 
with the wish of the relatives, only the evan- 
gelist turned the refusal of Jesus into a re- 
fusal of John the Baptist. But there is little 
similarity between the proud question of 
Bodhisattva and the humble demeanor of 
Jesus at his baptism, and the original re- 
fusal of John the Baptist to baptize Jesus 
has its cause in his admiration for the purity 
of Jesus. 

The parallel to the temptation of Jesus 
seems to be better grounded and, possibly, 
shows a borrowing. Lalita-Vistara (pp. 
257-286) narrates : Mara, the evil one, saw 
in a dream thirty-six terrible faces, which 
threatened him and his kingdom. He calls 
his army against the man who sits under 
the tree. The demons advise him to desist 
from his further struggle; but he gathers 
around him numberless deformed beings, 
who with their missiles, trunks of trees and 
mountains, adorned with garlands of roses 
consisting of skulls and chopped fingers, 
should frighten Bodhisattva. But when he 
shakes his head, like a lotus of a hundred 
leaves, Mara flees, and the missiles which his 



In Buddhistic Literature 35 

army had darted against him are turned into 
flowers. But Mara does not give up, and 
says to his daughters: "Go and win Bod- 
hisattva ; see whether he is not susceptible of 
love." In thirty-two ways, which are de- 
scribed in the most sensual manner, they 
show him by uncovering and covering the 
magic power of woman ; they apply all arts 
of seduction, but in vain. The eight deities 
of the Bodhi-tree praise Bodhisattva and 
deride Mara. The evil one displays for a 
third time his powers, but Bodhisattva softly 
touches the earth with his hand, and before 
its sound, which is like brass, the tempter 
departs. 

Differently is the history of the tempta- 
tion given by Little (Buddhism in Christen- 
dom) : Mara, the evil one, suddenly appears 
in the air and calls to Buddha : "Lead not the 
life of a Jogi. In seven days thou shalt be 
lord of the world." But Buddha strenu- 
ously refused; though, through the magic 
influence of the evil one, he felt a strong de- 
sire to visit once again the city of his father, 
he struggled against this desire, when, by 
a powerful work of the seducer, the earth 
suddenly turned like a potter's wheel. The 



36 New Testament Parallels 

sad eyes of Buddha now beheld the high 
towers and brilliant lights of the great city, 
which in the moonlight lay before him in 
sleep. The holy man hesitated, yet resisted 
the tempter and made his way to Vaisali. 
Here lived a holy man, Arata Kalama. 
Buddha said to him : "Arata Kalama, thou 
must initiate me how to seek after Brahma." 
With crossed legs Buddha spent six years, 
and sought to obtain the visions of the 
higher Buddhism and the magic powers. 
Having fasted forty-seven days and nights, 
without having tasted anything, Mara ap- 
peared before him to tempt him a second 
time. "Sweet creature," said the tempter, 
"the hour of thy death is at hand ; sacrifice, 
and eat a part thereof to save thy life." 
Buddha replied : "Death is the unavoidable 
end of life. Why should I try to avoid 
death. He that falls in battle is noble. He 
who is overcome is as good as dead. Demon, 
I shall soon triumph over thee." 

Van den Bergh admits that the similarity 
in the temptation of Buddha and Jesus does 
not refer to the promises of Satan, but only 
to the outer circumstances, as it were, to the 
frame of the history. But with Seydel, he 



In Buddhistic Literature 37 

calls attention to one word which he con- 
siders important. Buddha once said of him- 
self : "Lions and tigers I attracted through 
the power of friendship. Surrounded by- 
lions, tigers, panthers, bears, and buffaloes, 
antelopes, gazelles, and boars, I dwelt in the 
forest/' and, according to another record of 
the temptation of Buddha, the beasts came 
to do homage to the victor. Now, Matthew 
closes his detailed statement on the tempta- 
tion of Jesus with the words: "Then the 
devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came 
and ministered unto him/' Mark, however, 
condenses the whole narrative and says: 
"And immediately the spirit driveth him into 
the wilderness. And he was there in the 
wilderness forty days tempted of Satan ; and 
was with the wild beasts; and the angels 
ministered unto him." This phrase, "and 
was with beasts," Van den Bergh finds so 
unwarranted by the biblical history that it 
can only be a reminiscence from the tempta- 
tion of Buddha. But says Oldenberg (Theol. 
Literaturzeitung) , who corrects the quo- 
tation, accurately speaking : "Those words, 
that he attracted lions, tigers, and other 
beasts by the magic power of friendship and 



g8 New, Testament Parallels 

lived with them in the forest, according to 
the Kariga-Pithaka, are not spoken of Bud- 
dha, but of a black steer, which represented 
a previous form of existence of Buddha in 
the course of metamorphosis. By Mark, the 
addition, "and he was with wild beasts/' is 
only to be understood as an amplification of 
the words, "and he was in the wilderness." 
There the word of Oldenberg applies : "Phil- 
ological sagacity should not prevent us from 
taking the simple simply." Seydel finds the 
fasting strange in the history of the tempta- 
tion of Jesus, whereas it is natural, unavoid- 
able with Buddha, required by his Brah- 
manic cult. Therefore it must have been 
transferred from Buddha to Jesus. But the 
fasting of Jesus is most naturally connected 
with his abode in the wilderness, whereas the 
renunciation and world-contempt of Buddha, 
even after he recognized the folly of fasting, 
becomes nauseous; he covers himself with 
the exhumed rags of a dead beggar. 

It is certain that in the temptation — his- 
tories of Buddha and Jesus analogies are not 
wanting. Both are preceded by a glorifica- 
tion: Buddha under the Bodhi-tree, Jesus 
at the baptism in the Jordan. The tempta- 



In Buddhistic Literature 39 

tion takes place in the desert. Hunger, as 
the outcome of long fasting, offers to the 
tempter a point of attack. The devil retires 
unsuccessful ; he waits for a more favorable 
time. To the victor homage is rendered. 
Should Bodhisattva become a perfect Bud- 
dha, he had to pass through temptation in 
order to prove it. That Jesus was tempted 
to make a selfish use of his miraculous pow- 
ers, to obtain followers by a miracle display, 
yea, to gain the world by even a seeming 
homage to the evil one, all this he stated 
clearly in the history of the temptation 
which he gave to his disciples. That such 
a temptation could be experienced after mo- 
ments of exaltation; that it takes place in 
solitude; that it comes about when a special 
peril of attack is offered ; that the temptation 
when passed is followed by a feeling of ele- 
vation, victory, and strengthening — all this 
lies in the nature of the occurrence ; so that 
here also the similarity of some details in the 
temptations, which greatly differ in other 
respects, can be explained on other grounds 
than similar circumstances. 

Beatitudes, which form the introduction 
to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5. 



40 New Testament Parallels 

i-io), Buddha also spoke under the Bodhi- 
tree : "Whoever hears the law, whoever be- 
comes a seer, whoever is pleased in the soli- 
tude, is happy." "He who dwelling in the 
midst of living creatures yet does no evil, 
he is happy in the world. He who can rise 
above vice, be free from passions, he is 
happy in the world. He who has overcome 
selfishness and pride has obtained the high- 
est happiness" (Rgya 355). Even if one 
translates for "happy" "blessed," and puts 
the word at the beginning of the sentence, 
the like form of the Beatitudes, in spite 
of some similarities, can by no means de- 
ceive us as to the different keynotes and 
hopes of the Buddhist and the Christian. 

In the miracle narratives Seydel sees the 
similarity not in the miracles themselves but 
in the attitude of both miracle-workers to- 
ward those who ask miracles ; yet he admits 
this difference: that Christianity puts the 
miracle in the service of moral doing, where- 
as in Buddhism the miracle is the principal 
thing. Van den Bergh finds in Buddhist 
legend only one parallel to the miracles of 
Jesus; it concerns the walking of Jesus on 
the sea, who reaches his saving hand to 



In Buddhistic Literature 41 

sinking Peter (Matt. 14. 25-33). Van den 
Bergh finds so many contradictions in this 
story that it appears to him to be inaptly 
wrought together from different sources; 
whereas the Buddhist story, which speaks of 
a lay brother who, absorbed in ecstatic medi- 
tation on Buddha, goes into the river, in the 
midst of which, perceiving the water, begins 
to sink, but by a renewed ecstasy safely 
comes to the other side, causes Van den 
Bergh no surprise, since in India the miracu- 
lous power is actually associated with the 
power of faith ; so that the "Peter anecdote," 
"though, of course, not directly/' is bor- 
rowed, according to him, from a Hindu 
range of thought. Moreover, the story of 
that ecstatic lay brother is found in the in- 
troduction to one of the Dshatakas, popular 
stories which at a later period only received 
a Buddhist retouch. Concerning the miracle 
powers of both, Pfleiderer points out that, in 
the Buddhist legend, as well as in the Gos- 
pels, miracles of knowledge play an impor- 
tant part; for Buddha knows not only his 
own life before his birth but perceives also 
the thoughts of others. He also refers to 
some miracles of healing by Buddha, but the 



42 New Testament Parallels 

similarity is limited to possession of miracu- 
lous power, without agreement of special in- 
stances, so that a borrowing is not here 
asserted. 

Seydel assigns as a parallel of the highest 
order the agreement of the beatification of 
the mother of Jesus in the woman's ex- 
clamation (Luke ii. 2j) y "Blessed is the 
womb that bare thee, and the paps which 
thou hast sucked/' with the exclamation of 
a noble virgin who is charmed with Bud- 
dha's beauty and majesty: 

The mother is indeed blessed, 
The father is indeed blessed, 
The wife is indeed blessed 
Who has such a husband. 

Van den Bergh also regards as so impor- 
tant the agreement of this Buddhist narra- 
tive in the Nidanakatha, a pre-Christian 
canonical work of the Southern Buddhists, 
with the biblical passage, in which he misses 
the right cause for the exclamation of the 
woman, and in which he finds the reply of 
Jesus uncalled for : "Yea, rather, blessed are 
they that hear the word of God and keep it," 
that he feels justified in assuming here a 
Hindu influence upon the New Testament 



In Buddhistic Literature 43 

passage. But the temper of the virgin in 
her castle and the feeling of the woman in 
the crowd are entirely different. 

For the conversation of Jesus with the 
Samaritan women at the well (John 4), 
the model is said to be found in a Buddhist 
narrative. In the Dirya-vadana (fol. 217 a), 
by Bournouf, Introduction a 1'Histoire du 
Buddhisme Indien, Paris, 1844, it is said: 
Ananda, the most familiar disciple of Sa- 
kyamuni, after a long journey meets one 
day a young Tshandala girl, who draws 
water, and whom he asked for a drink. The 
girl, fearing to defile him by her touch, calls 
his attention to the fact that she was born 
in the race of the Tshandala and that she is 
not permitted to approach a monk. But 
Ananda answered: "My sister, I ask thee 
not as to thy race, nor as to thy family, I 
ask thee only to give me some water." Ac- 
cording to a Chinese redaction of this story, 
the girl falls in love with Ananda; the 
mother's witchcraft imperils the disciple, but 
the master saves him. As the girl continues 
to persecute the disciple with her love, Bud- 
dha himself promises her to act as mediator 
on condition that she first has her hair cut 



44 New Testament Parallels 

off. Then she is converted by Buddha and 
elevated to the rank of an Arhat, a perfect 
one. 

Van den Bergh finds the Indian story well 
put together, whereas the corresponding 
biblical narrative seems to him to consist of 
various incoherent traditions, and not in 
conformity to the relation of the Jews with 
the Samaritans in the time of Jesus. But 
from the consideration that the Buddhist 
narrative refers to Ananda and not to Bud- 
dha, and that in its further development it 
has no similarity whatever to the biblical 
history, the fact that either Ananda or Jesus 
after a hot journey should ask a little water 
of a woman or a girl drawing water is 
something so natural that there is no suf- 
ficient reason to doubt the independence of 
both narratives. 

Van den Bergh also calls attention to the 
similarity in the story of the widow's mite 
(Mark 12. 41-44; Luke 21. 1-4) with a 
story in a Chinese translation of the Bud- 
dharsharita by Acraghosa, who lived in the 
first century after Christ. This similarity 
seems to him important because of the "two 
mites," since in the Buddhist narrative a 



In Buddhistic Literature 45 

widow is also mentioned who offers "two" 
pieces of copper, which she found in the 
dirt. Her petition that her good deed may- 
be rewarded is fulfilled, for on her way 
home she meets the king of the country, 
returning from the funeral of his wife, 
who takes her for his wife. The thought 
that the poor sometimes offer more than the 
rich often occurs in Buddhist writings. Thus 
a poor woman fills the poor-box of Buddha 
with a handful of flowers, which rich people 
would not fill with their thousand bushels. 
But the similarity of both narratives con- 
sists only in this : that a poor woman in both 
instances offers "two" small coins, while it 
is not yet decided whether the woman of the 
biblical narrative had more than one coin. 

Van den Bergh attaches special impor- 
tance to the parallel discovered by him be- 
tween 2 Pet. 3, and a passage in the Nida- 
nakatta. Both speak of the universal con- 
flagration, the destruction of this world by 
fire, and both connect the imminent destruc- 
tion of the world with the admonition to 
lead a moral life. Some expressions, for 
example, the address "Beloved" in the Epis- 
tle of Peter, and "Friends" in the Buddhist, 



46 New Testament Parallels 

and the announcement that the elements 
"shall melt with fervent heat/' read almost 
alike in both passages. But the expectation 
of a destruction of the world by fire need 
not have been transferred from an Indian 
idea to the New Testament, and the empha- 
sis of the similarity in the address shows 
how even meaningless reminiscences are 
hunted up and emphasized. 

The striking parallel instanced by Pfleid- 
erer to the narrative of the choice of dis- 
ciples by Buddha and Jesus, who formerly 
belonged to other masters, Van den Bergh 
finds of too little consequence to attract to 
it the thought of even a remote relation. 

The textual change in the history of 
Nathanael (John 1. 47-51) introduced by 
Seydel, whereby he made possible the identi- 
fication of the fig tree under which Nathan- 
ael was when Jesus saw him with the Bodhi- 
tree under which Buddha received the 
illumination, Van den Bergh explains as 
very hazardous. 

A "prodigal son" (Luke 15. n-19) is 
also mentioned in the Saddharma Pundari- 
ka-Sutra, the "white lotus of the good law," 
a Buddhist writing, rich in parables belong- 



In Buddhistic Literature 47 

ing to the second Christian century. Where- 
as Wuttke (Geschichte des Heidentums, II, 
p. 522) considers the narrative derived from 
Christian sources. Foucaux considers it a 
very important proof of borrowing. Seydel, 
however, says: "The parable has, indeed, 
nothing in common with the Christian ex- 
cept that a son who had emigrated returns 
impoverished." In fact, the tendency of 
both stories is entirely different. In the 
Buddhist narrative the returned son does 
not recognize his father (who in the mean- 
time had become rich), and is made to do 
menial labor, tend the horses, and feed the 
swine, and only after probation is made heir, 
fifty years later, at the death of the father. 
But the biblical narrative shows the mercy 
of the father and puts the repentant son 
over against the self-righteous brother. 
Nevertheless, Van den Bergh thinks it is 
not impossible that Indian material has been 
independently worked up in the Gospel and 
was applied in illustration of a truly Chris- 
tian idea. 

The narrative of the healing of the man 
that was born blind (John 9. 1-5), which 
has a parallel in the "Lotus" and in what 



48 New Testament Parallels 

Van den Bergh finds a confusing mixture 
of two thoughts — the healing of one who 
was born blind and a healing on the Sab- 
bath — Seydel has explained as of Indian 
origin on account of the obvious supposition 
of a preexistence of the soul, whereas, he 
sees the kernel of the New Testament narra- 
tive, according to John 9. 39-41, in the 
words of Jesus, which speak of the spiritual 
blindness of the Pharisees, answering to 
the main thought of the Buddhist parable in 
which a blind man is first healed bodily, 
afterward spiritually. Pfleiderer attaches 
no importance to the parallelism of these 
narratives; whereas Van den Bergh as- 
sumes belief in the preexistence of the soul 
held by Plato and Alexandrianism, also in 
Israel, without controverting the possibility 
that in a much earlier time India influenced 
the doctrine of the metamorphosis taught by 
Pythagoras, and that his influences over 
Plato and Alexandrianism could have been 
asserted in New Testament ideas. But the 
question of the disciples, "Master, who did 
sin, this man, or his parents, that he was 
born blind ?" and the answer of Jesus, 
"Neither hath this man sinned, nor his par- 



In Buddhistic Literature 49 

ents," had by no means the belief in the pre- 
existence of the soul and the possibility of a 
sin in this preexistence for its supposition. 
Rather than think of metamorphosis or pre- 
existence of the soul and the possibility of an 
orthodox Indiaism, one might think that in 
the womb man could already have sinned as 
an embryo by evil impressions, an idea 
which rabbinism has further developed. 

The transfiguration on the mountain 
(Matt. 17. 9), which, according to Van den 
Bergh, is said to belong to the period after 
the resurrection and has been anticipated by 
the evangelist, has also a parallel in the life 
of Buddha. In the Maha-Parinibbana-Sut- 
ra, on two occasions Buddha instructs his 
disciple Ananda concerning the bright splen- 
dor of his complexion, namely on the night 
when he obtained the highest wisdom, and 
on the night in which he departed his life; 
also at the beginning and at the end of his 
public career; but the similarity, according 
to Van den Bergh, is limited only to the 
shining figure of the Lord on the mount 
shortly before he announced his suffering 
and death. 

Buddhist tradition has also a betrayer. 



5o New Testament Parallels 

Buddha had an enemy among his disciples, 
Devadetta, who belonged to his own kindred. 
From the vulture-mount, the favorite 
preaching place of Buddha, he rolls stones 
down on him ; sets a violent elephant at him. 
Moved by ambition, he is said to have tried 
to supplant the aged Buddha and to bring 
the government of the congregation into his 
own hand. He also demanded a stricter 
mode of life in order to appear the more 
pious and obtain followers. Yet, as the 
Buddhasharita of Asoaghosha, belonging to 
the first Christian century, narrates, he was 
cast into the deepest hell. The similarity 
between Devadetta and Judas is very small. 
For the biblical belief in Christ as Con- 
queror of Death and Life Mediator, for his 
atoning death, his resurrection, descent into 
Hades and ascension, which are only meant 
to be an expression for his "exaltation," for 
the belief in his salvation-bringing name, for 
baptism in his name as the bath of regenera- 
tion, and for the eating and drinking of the 
Lord's Supper, Pfleiderer adduces numerous 
parallels from the Graeco-Roman and Orien- 
tal history of religions, but none from Bud- 
dhism. But for "Christ as King of kings 



In Buddhistic Literature 51 

and Lord of lords/' who as the Head of his 
church is the Saviour, who establishes its 
salvation, who is its Lawgiver, whose will is 
the censor of its life, its Judge, who shall 
recompense everyone according to his 
works; yea, who is Lord of all the world, 
he finds corresponding parallels in the ex- 
travagant praises of Buddha, especially as 
they are contained in the twenty-third chap- 
ter of the Lalita-Vistara. Since Buddhism 
makes the life of the individual, and thus, 
also, that of its founder, end in Nirvana, 
Buddha cannot be thought of as an exalted 
one who continually rules his own with di- 
vine power ; but according to Pfleiderer, for 
the practical devotion of his believers, he is 
the ever-present object of their trusting love. 
Here, as everywhere, the psychological need 
of faith, according to human illustration of 
the eternal, naturally leads to a somehow 
conceived apotheosis of the historical 
Saviour. 

A parallel to the promise of the Paraclete, 
the Holy Spirit as the Comforter and Advo- 
cate, Seydel sees in the later development of 
the Buddhist legend of the appointment of 
Maitreya as Buddha's successor, who, five 



52 New Testament Parallels 

thousand years after his Nirvana will let 
himself down into the bosom of a Maya-deri, 
and will become a Buddha. 

That the Christian religion has in com- 
mon with the Buddhist the missionary im- 
pulse, and that both have it back to their 
founders, is undeniable, but certainly no 
proof of borrowing. 

Finally, the death of Buddha has nothing 
in common with that of Jesus ; as little as the 
last supper to which Buddha was invited by 
a blacksmith, and which is fatal to him 
through the use of brawn, has to do with 
the institution of the Holy Supper. A later 
Buddhist tradition narrates that in order to 
see the all-powerful Buddha personified in 
his death, he voluntarily offered his body to 
a starving tigress to save her and her young 
ones. 

When Stix sees agreements in the pre- 
cepts of Buddha and Jesus, Van den Bergh 
rightly points out, on the other hand, that 
the relationship of the two religions as uni- 
versal and ethical, may very well explain 
why some single sayings of a religious, eth- 
ical, or philosophical nature may sound alike, 
without any need of supposing a dependence 



In Buddhistic Literature 53 

of the one on the other for the explanation 
of such parallels, especially as these often 
have another meaning though agreeing in 
form. 

Ill 

Though borrowing cannot be proven for 
any of the New Testament narratives which 
are said to have their parallels in Buddhism ; 
though alleged similarities seem to have been 
proven, such as are partly subordinate, partly 
established in the like religious idea of dif- 
ferent nations, it is, nevertheless, conceiv- 
able that a brief juxtaposition of the most 
striking Buddhist and New Testament pas- 
sages, as by Stix, shows a similarity, and 
many would think the borrowing probable. 
In a literary way it has thus far not been 
proved. Seydel uses for it this figure : "One 
could break each single rod; more difficult 
it is with the bundle; but a bundle of bun- 
dles?" But this impression must vanish 
when not only like passages, be it individ- 
ually, or in bundles, are quoted; but the 
w r hole is considered, especially in the de- 
scription of the Buddhist sources. Within 
these Buddhist documents those alleged par- 



54 New Testament Parallels 

allels occupy a very small space. Lalita- 
Vistara, which comprises the biography of 
Buddha until his first public appearance — 
his preaching at Benares — is ten times as 
large as the Gospel of Luke, about forty 
times as large as the history of the infancy 
and childhood of Jesus until his first preach- 
ing in Nazareth narrated in the same Gospel. 
Especially is the connecting text, which com- 
bines the supposedly other poetical portions, 
considering the preference of the Indian for 
wild exaggerations, we have such a mass of 
extravagances and repetitions that the few 
beautiful or affecting passages are like pearls 
in the sea. It is hardly credible that a work 
like Lalita-Vistara should have exercised a 
power of attraction upon a primitive Chris- 
tian and through him upon the authors of 
the synoptic Gospels with their Old Testa- 
ment disposition, or even upon the author of 
the Gospel of John, influenced by the Hel- 
lenic spirit. Even Van den Bergh does not 
think it probable that the history of Buddha 
as a whole had in the earliest Christian time 
come so far toward the West as to have 
such an influence; but he thinks it probable 
that in the first two centuries Indian tradi- 



In Buddhistic Literature 55 

tion may have orally influenced the old 
Christian gospel statement. 

Thus the possibility only remained that 
some Buddhist narratives entered into the 
intellectual circle of the evangelists and were 
adopted by them, just as the apostle Paul 
received Greek educational elements. But 
against this must be asserted that it is one 
thing to quote occasionally in a letter the 
word of a Greek poet, and another thing 
knowingly to take parts from the biography 
of another founder of religion and to in- 
corporate them with the history of the life 
of Jesus. True it is that the first Christian 
century was a time of few and lasting reli- 
gious movements and also of syncretism. 
Doubtless these are extant for the religio- 
historical contemplation of points of contact 
and analogies between Buddhism and Chris- 
tianity; but these contacts and analogies 
are only partly apparent, yea, directly falla- 
cious. They are so overbalanced by the 
diversity of the entire conception of the 
world that the Christians of the earliest 
times, if they came at all in contact with 
Buddhism, must have perceived this diver- 
sity, and repudiated the similarity. They 



56 New Testament Parallels 

certainly were not deceived by the apparent 
similarities. In order to do away with the 
possibility of Christian influence on Bud- 
dhist sources, Seydel asks (p. 84) : "How 
does one conceive of the channels by which 
foreign elements could run into the solemnly 
fixed and scrupulously kept canon at Cash- 
mere and Nepal in the first Christian cen- 
turies ?" But this question can also be re- 
versed. Oldenbjerg (Theol. Literaturzeit- 
ung, 1905, p. 66) strikingly remarks, that 
the borrowings of foreign elements can al- 
ways only be estimated from the point of 
view of the eventually borrowing culture or 
literature, and comes to the conclusion: 
"The possibility that Buddhist elements pen- 
etrated into the circles in which the Gospels 
originated, must, as a matter of course, only 
be admitted in abstract. But when I con- 
sider how shadowy are the traces of Western 
learning concerning Buddha and Buddhism 
in the older times, I cannot find it very prob- 
able that the old Christian congregations 
should so quickly, as must be assumed, have 
snatched up so many of the legends." 

In his lecture delivered before the Inter- 
national Congress of Arts and Sciences at 



In Buddhistic Literature 57 

Saint Louis in 1904 on "The Investigation 
of the Old Indian Religions'' (Dentrohe 
Rundsahan, November, 1905, p. 216), he 
says : "I dare to express it as my impression, 
that nothing in the four Gospels points with 
special probability to more than mere inner 
parallelism' to Buddhism, not to a real bor- 
rowing from India. A prominent specialist in 
Indian literature (Pischel) not long ago said 
that "just as Babel is now boisterously 
knocking at the gates of the Old Testament, 
so Buddha knocks at present at the door of 
the New Testament. Indeed, much knock- 
ing one hears here and there who examines 
the later writings of old Christian literature. 
Even the dullest ear must hear it when in the 
mediaeval Christian romance of Balaam and 
Josaphat, the entire infancy history of the 
royal son of the Sakya house is found. But 
at the gates of the New Testament itself 
Buddha, as it seems to me, hardly knocks." 
It is small compensation that when he de- 
prives the biblical document of faithfulness 
and truth, Seydel (p. 301) repeatedly calls 
attention to the great apologetic value, which 
attaches itself to those parts of our Chris- 
tian Gospels which are without analogy, for 



58 New Testament Parallels 

example, the history of the passion, certain 
fundamental elements of the faith and life 
and individual traits of Jesus. In these we 
now have a solid kernel of historical actual- 
ity, immovably confirmed anew by these in- 
vestigations. 

It is therefore not sufficient to put the in- 
dividual New Testament and Buddhist nar- 
ratives side by side, but one must compare 
the spirit of both in order to arrive at a cer- 
tain result as to the possibility of borrowing 
from Buddhist sources or, at least, of their 
influence upon the Gospels. 

It is a glory of Buddhism that it first put 
the thought of redemption in the center of 
religion ; but how different is that which the 
Buddhist and what the Christian understand 
by this word. What is that from which he 
wishes to be delivered? How does the re- 
demption take place and whereby is it ac- 
complished ? The Buddhist wishes a deliver- 
ance from the suffering of existence; his 
desire is to be freed from birth, in what- 
ever form it is, and finally to enter into Nir- 
vana, into' nothing. Redemption he accom- 
plishes himself, in a purely intellectual way, 
through the knowledge of the folly which 



In Buddhistic Literature 59 

has caused his existence, and through the 
complete resignation of every wish for 
existence. The Christian, too, hopes for de- 
liverance from suffering, and prays for de- 
liverance from evil ; but he suffers more un- 
der the sin than under the suffering; from 
the former he wishes to be freed, freed from 
its punishment, freed from its power. 

Buddhism has deeply felt the great law of 
causality. Not as if it denied freedom. 
Though it may lack the full notion of sin 
as guilt, yet it lacks not that of folly, by 
which man becomes disgusted with life ; but 
it lacks one thing : belief in grace. Religion 
cannot get along without this word. But 
Buddhism knows nothing of "grace," but 
only of Karma. The inexorable law of 
causality shows that in its original form 
Buddhism is at least a philosophical con- 
ception of the world, that it has no compre- 
hension of the deepest need of the human 
heart. 

Buddhism is great in resignation and 
ability to suffer; but this resignation has its 
cause in the contempt of the body and of life 
in general. It is far removed from the resig- 
nation of the Christian, which has its cause 



6o New Testament Parallels 

in the conviction that even the dark and 
heavy experiences come according to the 
will of God, and that in suffering is also a 
blessing. 

Buddhism has seriously looked into the 
face of the vanity of earthly things and the 
distress of life. For it is its deepest con- 
viction that the origin of the world is a 
great calamity; that the life of man, from 
his birth to his death, is only suffering, and 
that all longing of him who has come to 
knowledge can only consist in the desire to 
be finally relieved from the pain of any ex- 
istence. Pessimism cannot be understood 
more thoroughly, more naturally. Yea, pes- 
simism is so much the characteristic sign of 
Buddhism that some who incline to it hardly 
know anything more accurate of its teaching 
than this; and, whatever the causes, they 
only share in this pessimistic temper. Cer- 
tainly, Christianity also has a deep insight 
into the sin and misery of the world. It is 
a conviction of biblical Christianity; the 
imagination of man's heart is evil from his 
youth; "out of the heart proceed evil 
thoughts.'' What is said of the natural man 
is said of the world; "the world lieth in 



In Buddhistic Literature 6i 

wickedness." With the lamentation, "O, 
wretched man that I am ! Who shall deliver 
me from the body of this death?" the apostle 
closes the statement of the painful struggle 
between the two powers in his heart and in 
his members; but immediately after that 
lamentation of recollection, he exclaims : "I 
thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." 
He only knows the one side of Christianity, 
its presupposition, who only knows the pes- 
simistic trait in it; not, however, the other 
side, the joyous, world-overcoming, sense of 
victory. 

Both religions have in common the belief 
in a life after death; but the Buddhist is 
afraid of it; the redeemed Christian looks 
for it. To the former nonexistence seems 
to be better than the happiest state ; the lat- 
ter has a ' 'desire to depart, and to be with 
Christ forever." Buddhism by self-disci- 
pline and mercy has morally influenced Asi- 
atic nations ; but its ethics is essentially nega- 
tive, a morality which enables its adherents 
to suffer and endure, but not to act and 
work. Buddhism believes in no God. The 
Christian has found in God his Father. In 
the face of such differences, should the 



62 New Testament Parallels 

Christians of the early time have been acces- 
sible to Buddhist influences and made 
legends from the life of Buddha the model 
for the life of Christ? It is conceivable that 
the nominal Christians of our day, who are 
inwardly estranged from faith and yet have 
an indistinct religious craving, incline to the 
teachings of Buddhism, and adopt them, not 
because of its present degenerated form, but 
on account of its original, philosophical con- 
templation of the world ; but it is hard to be- 
lieve that Christians of the first centuries 
received Buddhist legends into the Gospel of 
Christ. 



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